Homemade Fermented Sauerkraut

Did you know that the sauerkraut you buy in the shops is definitely not the real thing? Usually it's just cabbage in water and vinegar. Authentic sauerkraut is fermented and contains only cabbage and salt - with maybe some herbs. The lactobacilli bacteria that naturally lives on the surfaces of the cabbage works to create a wonderfully tasty true pickled taste which is very different to vinegar and has a lot of health benefits, too. It becomes a 'probiotic' like the yoghurt products you can buy in the shops, but obviously without all the added sugar! Sometimes you will find true sauerkraut in the shops but it's almost always been pasteurised, which kills all of the beneficial bacteria and thus makes it almost pointless.

In the world of home fermenting, we want to learn to work with, and not against, the naturally occurring beneficial bacteria - it is surprising that we don't sterilise the equipment we are going to use: namely a jar and something to smush-down the cabbage inside the jar (we use a wooden rolling-pin). Instead, we just give them a good clean with normal washing-up liquid and rinse them thoroughly. An interesting thing about lacto-fermentation is that if done correctly, the good bacteria will completely crowd out any small amounts of undesirable bacteria during the fermentation process, and the lactic acid produced by the good bacteria kills putrefying types. Also, we want as much of the lactobacilli as possible to make it all work! Just make sure you buy organic cabbage to prevent chemicals getting in and spoiling the fun. 

Okay - to the method!

Just wash your cabbage. Either colour works well but in my opinion red has a more satisfying texture. And it looks nice. Now cut it in half and cut out the core (very nice to eat raw actually).

Now just take a nice sharp knife and shred the two halves of the cabbage. Cutting the cabbage finely will help it get broken up during the next step which is to knead and crunch it with your hands. 

Next put the shredded cabbage into a big bowl (it will reduce down a lot shortly - don't panic) and add 1 teaspoon of sea salt or other unprocessed salt for each 1kg of your prepared cabbage. It's not too important to be very precise. Now, get in there with your hands and really squeeze and crunch the cabbage until you start to draw out plenty of liquid as pictured below. Do this for as long as you can; the more liquid bought out at this stage the better. 

Once you've got plenty of liquid at the bottom of your bowl, transfer it along with the cabbage into a large jar. Now it's time to get your wooden rolling-pin or other wooden heavy instrument and bash and grind down the cabbage for around another 5-10 minutes until the liquid is sufficient to completely cover the cabbage. This is important as exposed cabbage may get mould in the fermentation processing time and spoil the batch and all your hard work! 

 

Once that's done, simply cover the jar with its lid and squeeze tightly closed - fermentation is an anaerobic process and too much oxygen might spoil the process.

Now just leave the jar in a room-temperature place for at least two weeks, slightly loosening the lid around every 3-4 days to allow the gases to escape. If you can wait for more than two weeks, your sauerkraut will taste even better, but it will still taste great after two weeks.

Blog developments and... whales

Hello! Now, because as you know photography and art is something we do out of love, it is already very much a part of a wider 'picture' in our lives. Isn't it true that our individual interests whatever they may be are all influenced and augmented by the others, that they stem from a general interest in the world? So we thought it might be nice for our blog posts to include more wide-ranging subjects. Our interests reflect our work, and vice-versa, so it's a natural thing for us to do. 

We've found a way to include tags for our posts that point to subjects or points of interest included in that post, and arranged it so that when you go to our blog homepage, there is a 'cloud' of subjects. The ones that are mentioned most often will be bigger than the others. 

So for example, if one of us or both of us is having a particular interest in science (like now), we might write a little post about that - or about philosophy maybe. The idea is that wherever possible we'll include a picture of ours or a classic picture that sort of expresses these things nicely. Naturally, the overall theme of the blog will be photography, but we hope some of the other subjects will be of interest to you too and it'd be even nicer to get some comments or discussion about what we've mentioned from anyone who wants to. 

Now at the moment both of us are interested in some of the "debate" between evolution and creationism. I put the word debate that way because although people who accept evolution and creationists talk together, I think a real debate can only happen between two parties who have facts, and in this case of course, that isn't happening! For example have a look at this... shocking ignorance. 

This is a pretty scary issue since as you may know, evolution has been repeatedly banned in the US in certain (southern!) states in favour of a literal translation of Genesis, the Bible story. However much the ideas in Genesis might be considered allegorical or symbolic, of course creationists take the story's events literally and in fact believe that the Earth is under 10,000 years old. 

We both find creation myths a fascinating area, and there seem to be commonalities amongst them which point to deeper truths - but most definitely on the symbolic edge of the scale. As a matter of fact, we are planning on our to-do list a fine art piece about Hindu mythology, which we're looking forward to a great deal. 

Talking of evolution, did you know that whales are evolved from hyena-like animals? More than 50 million years ago, these land animals began to become semi-aquatic in what is now northern India and slightly later what is now Pakistan, their hind legs gradually becoming more and more fin-like over millions of years, until they became permanent water-dwellers as today. Apparently even now, the occasional whale will turn up with short, stubby hind legs! If this sounds incredible, have a quick look at this 'geological clock' - a visual representation of the Earth's timeline. Notice that the black line represents the first hominids a mere 2 million years ago and how immensely small that is in comparison to the rest of Earth's history. Isn't it amazing? And all of the transformation from the hyena-like-creature to modern whale happened well within that last light green period on the graphic, the Cenozoic. Marvellous. 

Beach

This shoot has a lot of lovely memories for me. Ellie and I had a really clear idea of a shot on a beach with the model walking away from the camera and a beautiful calm sea and sun. Ellie had a lovely white lacy dress that seemed perfect, so we went off to a beach I know to be extremely photogenic to put our vision into action.

The day was spent rather blissfully in Barmouth, north Wales, playing on the beach. Towards the end of the day when the sun was going down, we began to take some shots, and as we did the scene just kept getting more peaceful; the sea-birds were calling in their high voices and the sun began to rake across the sea and beach. Warm colours in the sky and a breeze.

We soon got this shot, and though we kept experimenting I think we both knew which one we wanted. I love it because it expresses something about Ellie that I love; her inquisitiveness, sense of freedom and her amazing openness. I think it also expresses that feeling of limitless potential so readily found on a fine day with sea and mountains... we’re both really proud of it.

David

Horse

Ever since I was a small boy I’ve been fascinated by the mysterious quality of fog and mist. The hill that overlooked my house and my school, Turner’s Hill, the beneficent grassy mound rising above Rowley Regis and Dudley, is much higher than the ground which surrounds it, and so each time mist came, its top would disappear in an auspicious cloud.  In fact, the higher part of the hill was named “Cloud Land” on old maps, which shows how regular these events are.

On the hill were two trees, until around six years ago: old and gnarled, from the distance of my nan’s back garden some mile and a half away they looked like a giant grey-black horse bending her head to eat. When I would walk up there with my mom, nan or uncle, we would say hello to the real horses that graze on the grass. So I’ve always associated the hill with horses, and when I saw a particularly lovely thick mist descend, I grabbed the camera and went. 

I was moved by the aura of gentle power that emanated from the horses, somehow intensified by the dimness of the air, the failing light, and the stillness of the trees that day. 

David 

The First Post

Hello, and welcome. Since this is the first post, I feel inclined to say a few words about the genesis of this online journal. As you will know from the brief 'about' blurb to the right of the page as you read this, David and I are not only partners in art, but also in love and life. My own artistic background is in photography, and David's in music - he is a wonderful piano and drum player, who also happens to be rather good photographer, with a full and considered appreciation for visual art. It is only natural that conversation between two artistic souls with such an intimate connection will eventually lead to the too-ing and fro-ing of creative ideas, and such was the case for us. One idea led to the next, each adding suggestions for the creation of some exciting conceptual photographic projects; and it was here that Gwynne-Gibbons was born: artistic collaborators creating imagery that expresses a joint vision. Whilst we use photographic processes to produce our work, we aim for our fine art collection to be more than simply a set of photographs, blurring the metaphoric lines between photographic and painterly techniques, and expressing a concept or story within each image. As I write these words, some of our ideas have been realised, but many remain as thoughts in our minds, with the promise of wonderful art to be realised in future projects. 

As a passionate photographer, I have been asked many times over the years to photograph couples' weddings; I have always felt it to be a wonderful thing to be trusted enough to capture such an important day, and so have spent a long while honing my skill and passion for the art of wedding photography. A while back, David and I made the decision to start photographing weddings together and when the Gwynne-Gibbons fine art blog started to come to life, we thought it only natural to combine both our conceptual and wedding work together. This blog will document, through words and images, our development as photographic artists in both fields of work.

Today, I have our first fine art image to present to you. We purposely didn't develop a story behind the image, instead, choosing simply to bring together several elements that appeal to our sense of beauty: the female form, nature, and books; the results having the feel of a classic painting... the story is left to your imagination. We believe that beautiful images can be created with only the simplest of elements, and for our initial projects, we have tried to use resources that we have available to us. To create an image that features a person, one needs a model; something that we didn't have immediately to hand - in the strictest sense - and so it was decided that I would take on this role, despite normally being the one behind the camera! This worked well for us for this shoot as we could work together - David shooting and me posing - until we achieved the image that we had in mind. We created this image in the woods near our home in West Birmingham on a cold autumn afternoon, where I struggled not to look as cold as I felt....!

We are currently working on a new 'Gwynne-Gibbons' website which we plan to release in the next couple of weeks, so keep a look out :)

Until next time.

Ellie 

Behind the scenes:

During the shoot, we attracted the attention of a few dog-walkers as they passed by, and I was joined at one point by a very friendly black and white dog who came tearing towards me enthusiastically to get in on the shot!